What I’m Loving 11/5/05

Ava Luxe sells their own fragrances and other bath and body items. This week I have the Hand and Body Cream with their scent Noel Blanc. First, their cream is light and whipped up and silky, a wonderful consistency, one of the best I’ve run across. It’s very emollient without being greasy. Notes for Noel Blanc: ozone, midnight air, woods, white chocolate, berries, spices, cashmere essences, soft white musk and creamy vanilla. This just smells like comfort and home. The vanilla isn’t too sweet, it’s balanced well with the other notes so it doesn’t wind up smelling like just vanilla after an hour (my pet peeve about vanila scents, I just don’t want to smell like a cookie). I did get a couple of their other scents in the perfume, viva and tabac and Oeillet Rouge, but haven’t had a chance to really study them. They seem very nice.

Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb. They really get an A for the over-the-top lemming-inducing description: “Flowerbomb is a floral explosion, a profusion of flowers that has the power to make everything seem more positive. On application, the perfume’s magically evocative notes will immediately awaken your deepest senses, giving you the impression of living life in your own secret garden away from hard reality.” At $95 for a 1.7 oz bottle, you’ll be needing that escape from your credit card reality.

What it turns out to be, instead, is a pretty nice perfume. This was my surprise sniff of the week. I tried it in the store, thinking I would hate it. I’m not the kind of girl that wears sweet, overly floral scents.

Notes: Top — bergamot, tea. Middle — jasmine, freesia, orchid. Base — centiflora rose, patchouli.

The first burst from the bottle is very floral, but it immediately dries down into a more gourmandy fragrance, warm and enveloping, no sharp notes. Sillage is good, but not the overpowering perfume wake I expected with “bomb” in the name. Lasting power is good, but not in an overwhelming, “please let this fragrance die” way. What was most interesting is that the patchouli that I normally detest, hate, loathe and otherwise scorn isn’t bothering me. I can smell it just a bit, but only in how it holds the flowers together, which is what a base note should do. This is definitely a fragrance for gourmandy and floral fragrance fans to have.

Now, if you don’t want to spring for the $95 per bottle at Saks, which has an exclusive on the perfume that runs another couple of months, I have it in my eBay store for decants in two sizes. I never buy a perfume anymore without getting a decent decant first to make sure it’s worthy of my dollars. If you want a sample or smaller or larger decant, just e-mail me, and I’m happy to send that out. If you’re an incensey patchouli freak (I know there are a LOT of you out there) the Messe de Minuit can’t be beat.

What’s coming up: I am so pleased to announce that I have found the HG (Holy Grail) of fragrance. I don’t want to say too much and spoil it, but I hope to have it winging its way to me soon. I can say this, from the generous sample I tried, I used it all up in one day because I kept thinking, “Damn, I smell good!” and spritzed on some more to keep my jonesin’ little pug nose happy with a fresh infusion of fragrant heaven. This is my signature scent, without a doubt, and now it just needs to come home from the pefumer’s shop where it is sitting in its little box crying for me.

In the next week or so, I will have also gotten my hands on Youth Dew Amber Nude. Tom Ford has redone Youth Dew for Estee Lauder. I did get a sniff of this, and I am mightily impressed — I fell in instant lemming-osis. I never was a Youth Dew wearer, but my sister wore it as her first “grown-up girl” perfume for years, and I have really fond memories of it. Notes: Tea, Grapefruit With A Beautiful Heart Of Black Rose, Carnations, jasmine, Ylang-ylang. The Dry Down Finishes Off With Patchouli Notes, Amber, Vetiver, Chocolate And Vanilla. This will be a very limited initial release, I understand. It is exclusive to Saks until spring of 2006. My local Saks is only getting in 9 bottles next week, and they’re all spoken for, and nothing else is coming in until December, I believe. I’m also trying out a couple of items in the rest of the Tom Ford cosmetic line for Estee Lauder. I’ll cover those as well.

I will be offering decants and samples of this in my eBay store once I have it. BTW, why do I sell decants on eBay? Not to make money, that’s for sure. I like getting bottles of some perfumes because I think I’ll go through the whole bottle or I just really love the bottle (No, Fifi Chachnil, I am not looking your way again, you little bottle siren). As it turns out, I either do not like the perfume enough to get through the whole bottle or I am distracted by the next new scent that wafts by my nose (more often this than the other), and I hate to let nice scent just sit. I used to give away all my scents that I was underutilizing, which was a total boon for whoever happened to be nearby when I was cleaning out my perfume cabinet (yes, I do have a whole cabinet devoted to perfumes). Once I discovered small decanting bottles and eBay, the rest is history. Decants just keep funding my next new perfume finds so I don’t have to raid the kids’ college fund. I also buy decants from other people, lots of them, so I can try out perfumes and keep perfumes that I don’t want to wear all the time on hand in smaller amounts for less money. It’s a wonderful way to expand your fragrance wardrobe, and I’ve found almost every decanter on eBay to be a perfume lover of the best integrity. I generally just list the harder-to-find, more unusual things and not my entire perfume wardrobe.

This week should see a review of the drugstore mascara that is fast winning the hearts and eyes of makeup’istas everywhere. First person to guess what it is, I’ll send you a free decant of Flowerbomb.